Whassssupppp!!!
My favorite when people were doing it at the office, the grocery store, on the Internet, at the Burger King, on the bus, in every college classroom, etc:
Whasssssuppppp!!!
I thought the EDS Cat Roundup was inspired, but I never could figure out what it was advertising.
“Dude, you’re gettin’ a Dell!” is the 21st century’s first “Whasssssssssuppp!”. If the kid wants any career at all he needs to just make believe that Steven got whacked by a fanatical Mac user and walk away for a couple of years.
When I was a kid, there was a commercial for a horror movie- “IT’S ALIVE”- easily the scariest ad of all time. Since it was a horror movie, that must mean it was a successful ad.
I hate, with all my heart and soul, the following commercials:
Any GAP commerical
Any Old Navy commercial
Any commercial with Carrot Top in it
Those damn Truth ads. I don’t smoke, but those ads make me want to start smoking just to be contrary to the self-righteous brats in the commercials.
Commercials I like:
I loved the Nike commercial they showed a lot during the Olympics earlier this year…the one with the piano and violin music playing over images of various athletes doing their thing.
That Mike’s hard lemonade commercial where the aliens kidnap that dude’s girlfriend.
Also, while its always said that the content of an ad doesn’t matter so much as just creating awareness of a product or company’s existence, its often the case that a commercial is so annoying that I vow to boycott the company’s product in the hopes that they’ll go bankrupt so they have no more money to buy ad time for their awful commercials. Creating awareness is good, yes, but if that awareness attaches a negative stigma to your company, that isn’t very good.
I hate Gatorade/Powerade ads with the exception of the GatorBowl one.
I hate ALL commercials where an announcer spiels about technology, future, tradition, past, etc. And often features clips of people doing stuff. Triple shitbags in their direction of the people look up at the camera and smile.
I do not like Taco Bell commercials now. The dog got old pretty fast, and this new thing sucks too.
Subway’s alright.
Carrot Top. Or any Collect Call ads in general. And the people in those.
I also hate Dr. Pepper commercials now. Guess why. It’s obvious. But just guess.
That’s my favorite commercial too. Apple’s 1984. I probably like it because Orwell’s 1984 is my favorite book. A little trivia: it was directed by Ridley Scott.
I hate that Arby’s Christmas commercial where the carolers are singing about the menu to “12 Days of Christmas”: "Fiiiivee roast beef saaaandwhiches…"or something. I hate most Christmas commercials. I’m glad they only air once a year (although they usually throw them out after Halloween).
That would be the “Big Brother” ad directed by Ridley Scott. It’s considered one of the finest commercials ever made.
My current favorite is the Sony ad where the older gentleman buys a trip on the Russian rocket. I also like the Serta ad where the sheep end up in prison.
The Carrot Top/Alf/any long distance/collect call ads all suck. The worst ads though, have to be the ones for the various loan shark/fly by night phone companies that have Mr. T as their spokesperson.
“How ya doin’?” “I’m doing fine! Just got in today. My brother-in-law picked me up at the airport. Mighty big airport you got. And the people here are so nice.”
I like the ESPN commercials too, like the one with the old timers, or Lil’ Penny Hardaway and Gheorghe Muresan, or the Trey Wingo one (“Seriously, what’s your name?” “It’s Trey Wingo”), or the Sportscenter crew’s commercial endorsements (including Keith Olbermann on panflute!).
–Ad for some men’s perfume, Axe or something I think it’s called, where this hunky guy sprays on the perfume in the elevator and then leaves. The next guy (a geek) gets on the elevator, along with a hot girl (a stranger), who thinks the perfume is from HIM, and promptly stops the elevator. Next shot, they are exiting elevator straightening clothes. Final shot of commercial, geeky guy is joined in elevator by an old lady or a biker guy (changes with each commercial).
–Some Telus (British Columbia phone company) ads, involving animals doing things around computers. Like the one with a beaver and kangaroo talking to each other over webcams. Some of the ads are dumb, but I like their slogan: The Future is Friendly. Helps that they are a decent company, in my limited experience with them, too.
Hate:
–Ad for FutureShop (computer store) in which this couple is going out to dinner, riding on a sleigh, etc, and the girl keeps saying “I love you,” to which the guy just grins and smiles and can’t bring himself to say “I love you” back. But then she gets him a big screen TV from FutureShop, and he says “I love you!” It’s such an awfully crass commercial, in my opinion–what, you’re recommending that people try to buy love from each other? If I had a guy who wouldn’t say he loved me until I bought him a TV, I’d dump him, not become a fan of the store I got the TV from!
Oh, and I like the “Got Milk?” ads, though take-offs of them (“Got ______”) have gotten old by now.
I like creative car ads, but there are so few of them. One that’s memorable has this guy’s toes singing–it looks like someone drew smiley faces with a pen on each toe, and they’re animated/singing. I’m not sure if I find that cute (since I draw on my toes and fingers sometimes) or disturbing (since it kind of ends up looking like he’s got holes in his toes).
I REALLY hate the movietickets.com commercials that are always on at the beginning of movies in theatres(here in Canada anyhow). If I wasn’t so worried about getting a seat, I’d show up about 5 minutes after the scheduled start just to miss it.
…I also don’t want to miss the coming attractings, they are my favorite part (no jokes).
My favorite adds are the Bud Light Institute. I bust a gut whenever that dude talks about the Shrimp Vindilu(sp). I like all of the commercials though.
I find the Jack in the Box commercials consistently entertaining, and they have new ones every few weeks, so you don’t get beat over the head with them.
My least favorite ads, by far, are NBC and Fox promos for their major shows. They seem to have taken their advertising cues from the movie industry–tell the whole story in the advertising.
If we’re talking campaigns (not single ads, but whole multiple ad concepts) -
OK soda ads (everything, the phone line, the print ads, the newspaper ads, the can labels, the radio and tv spots…) perfect, perfect ad campaign. Completely undrinkable product.
J&B Scotch print ads of the mid-80s.
GAP ads from about two or three years ago. Amazon.com christmas tv ads from two and three years ago.
“Got Milk?”
Nissans “enjoy the ride” - (including GI Joe & Barbie, & the pigeons trying to torpedo the car)
Snickers - (including “great googly moogly,” “I invented pants,” and “I’m BATMAN!”)
Jack in the Box - (pretty much all of them, but especially the waiting for BK & McD to call series…)
Loathe:
I tend to forget those - but “Switch” is still on the air, and still sucking.
“Army of One” I don’t want an army of a bunch of ones. I want my tax dollars going to a unified team, thank you very much.
Clairol Herbal Essence
In the theater that I frequent, it’s fandango.com. Same concept, and most likey just as annoying.
And I second the emotion amarinth put forth about the “Army of One” campaign. When I first saw it, I thought to myself “Man, I heard recruiting had gone down in recent years, but I didn’t think we were that low.”
Marginally related: the websites for all the U.S. Armed Forces recruiting campaigns all end in the .com top-level domain. This is WRONG WRONG WRONG. The U.S. Armed Forces are not comercial enterprises. They have their own top-level domain, just for themselves: .mil. At the very least, they should be .gov, but definately not .com.
My current non-favorites are the “Dell Interns, Day 37” ones. I find them even more annoying than the the Joe Teen commercials that they used to have.
In the most recent one, some Dell drone gets a phone call from his father, who’s attempting (the fool!) to buy a PC at a brick-and-mortar store. While the guy is talking to his dad, the three interns come up and give him this really strange “You can do it, dude!” encouragement dance, complete with thumbs-up gestures, as though talking to a customer on the phone was reason to egg him on. I don’t know why, but they just irritate me to death.
Also, I want to strangle, pluck, cook, and eat that AFLAC duck.
The commercials that I really like are for, I think, DirecTV. They show a clip from an old movie, like The Karate Kid, and then suddenly one of the caracters will turn to the camera and say, “You’ve seen this movie three hundred times. Why don’t you get DirecTV and watch something new?” Those are very funny.
Creating awareness is good, yes, but if that awareness attaches a negative stigma to your company, that isn’t very good.